


Time's Very End

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: s04e18 The End of Time (2), Immortality, M/M, Time Lord senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-14 17:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13594776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: Damn Jack for playing hard to get now, of all times.





	Time's Very End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/gifts).



> Set toward the end of _The End of Time_.
> 
> Many thanks to my fantastic beta, without whom this story would never have been finished. ♥

WILF  
Where are you going? 

DOCTOR  
To get my reward. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


No more time. The Doctor could feel it in the twitches under his skin, the subtle wrongness building. He could feel it in his muscles, spasming uncontrollably at random intervals. The scrape of reality against his senses was becoming harsher, and regeneration energy was beginning to accumulate. His body was falling apart.

It was anyone's guess whether the regeneration would succeed. His song was ending, after all, as the Ood had said.

No more time: he needed to get his reward _now_. For once, time was not on his side, and a TARDIS was no help at all. He was dying; he had to say good-bye now or never. And he'd tracked down everyone, except Jack.

He'd found Martha and Mickey, and Sarah and Luke, had watched over them one last time, looking his fill. He had Verity lined up, and Donna and her family, and, of course, Rose.

He'd leave Rose for last. She'd been first - she'd been there when he became this version of himself - and he wanted her to be last, too. That was only right.

But where was Jack? Why couldn't he find Jack? The man was a time traveller, and immortal at that - there had to be an almost infinite number of times and places when and where he was. But the only space-time coordinates the Doctor could find were the ones he couldn't approach, since his past self was already there. Crossing his own time stream, and Jack's - not advisable, never advisable, even at the best of times. And with Jack and him, they rarely ever were. They certainly weren't now.

_Dancing in the TARDIS, giddily, for an entire night because just that once, everyone had lived. Laughing over outrageous stories in Cardiff. One brilliant night in Kyoto, where they'd ..._

Well. Even at the best of times, anyway. 

Why couldn't he find him anywhen else? Were his time senses breaking down? Was something shielding Jack? Damn Jack for playing hard to get now, of all times. He needed answers before he ran out of time. 

Abruptly, the Doctor slammed down a lever. 

"Change of course," he announced to the empty TARDIS. "Can't hide from me, Jack."

  
  


* * *

  
  


The Salirian carnival in the dust-rings of Sar Sabaleh was a dizzying, confusing mess of grav-strip paths lined by the glittering bubbles of its various attractions. From a distance, it looked like nothing so much as a tangled ball of wool.

The Doctor made his way along the paths easily, finding his way by his temporal senses - which appeared to be working just fine, after all - rather than vision or spatial orientation, until he was standing in front of the bubble he'd been searching for. He cut in before a pair of Malmooth and burst inside.

The bubble was cut in half by a transparent floor. In the lower half, an indefinable substance swirled, colourful and glowing. _Special effects_ , the Doctor thought, scornfully. The upper half was empty, save for the person standing at the centre, a swirl of self-mixing cards in the air before them.

The Doctor's time senses jangled.

The person - the Doctor didn't know the being's name, had never been told - was tall and silver-scaled, their tentacles rippling with every movement. There was no visible head, only a long vertical torso with a dozen tentacles growing from either end. The lower tentacles it balanced on were shifting constantly - there were never more than four actually holding the being up, but exactly which four was always changing. The upper tentacles were holding still, at least for the moment.

"Doctor," the fortune teller said, recognising him effortlessly, even though the last time they'd met he'd had a different body, a different face, and a far more colourful coat. Their voice was a fluid telepathic resonance.

"I need to find someone," the Doctor said impatiently, holding himself stiff against the turmoil in his body, reaching out for the cards. He caught one of them in one hand and made a complex movement, letting the rest of them stack on top of each other, then passed the entire stack towards the fortune teller.

Not much longer until that much coordination would be beyond him.

"Yes," the fortune teller said. "I think you do. Tell me who."

No small-talk with the fortune teller; the Doctor appreciated that. On the other hand ...

The Doctor rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, though it did nothing to ease the ache in his muscles. He looked down at his trainers and the glowing swirl beneath them. "You know Jack Harkness," he said gruffly.

The fortune teller stretched out their upper tentacles in a universal _What are you talking about?_ gesture. "Who?"

For a moment, the Doctor was stumped. He knew the fortune teller's kind had a time sense, of a sort. Not the same as a Time Lord's, but real enough. True enough. None of what they did here would be possible without it. The Salirian carnival didn't deal in chicanery, after all. So they knew about Jack. They couldn't _not_ know.

The fortune teller, the Doctor realised to his dismay, simply wasn't familiar with the name. Of course not - not everyone was on a first-name basis with the Fact at the centre of the universe.

 _Not everyone, but almost,_ he thought sourly, his hands clenching at his sides. _Wait till Jack gets round to this one._

He pushed the thought aside, grasping for a way to describe who he meant. Looks, habits, occupation, personality? All irrelevant here. Which left the one thing he really didn't like to talk about.

"The Fact," the Doctor finally said, looking up, nearly spitting out the words. The fortune teller's attention seemed to burn against his skin. "The Wrongness. The fixed point. The nail driven through space-time, pinning it in place."

The fortune teller's tentacles gestured _aha!_ "The Eye of the Storm," they said, sounding much enlightened.

The Doctor made a face, stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. "Yes. Him."

"Wrongness, you say," they quoted thoughtfully.

He looked away. "It's not meant to exist. It was never supposed to."

Tentacles swayed between them, showing equivocation. "Yet it always was."

It wasn't as if he didn't know. Time had been rewritten; the universe had been rewritten. And time sense though the fortune teller had, they still couldn't remember the universe that had been. They couldn't sense the way reality had been twisted, irrevocably, into something it should never have been.

_That's what you get for letting a human child play with infinite power._

"I know," the Doctor said, tiredly, clenching and unclenching his hands to work out the pins and needles that had suddenly appeared. Only for that reason, of course. _No more time._ "It doesn't matter, I suppose."

"You seek it, then," the fortune teller said calmly. "Him, you say. Why?"

"Does it matter?"

A tentacle spread a row of cards into the air, then described a circle around the cards. "I cannot find him for you without."

The Doctor pressed his lips together. "I owe him," he said. True, in a way, not that it mattered.

Another tentacle poked at the cards, snatched one out, tossed it back into the row, which was now turning into a swirl. 

"No," the fortune teller said. "More than that."

The Doctor swallowed. Truth, was it? He was far better at just talking. "I'm dying," he admitted. "I want to say good-bye."

The fortune teller gave no indication of surprise at the news. Another card was snatched from the swirl, which was expanding. A dubious sway of the tentacles. A second card joined it; then a third. 

"No," the fortune teller said again. "More."

What more was there? He didn't have the time to waste on this. The Doctor wanted to throw up his hands, to leave. Verity was waiting, and then Donna, and Rose. He didn't _have_ to do this, damn it. If Jack wouldn't be found, well, that was that, wasn't it? 

A coughing fit shook him out of his train of thought. Not a hint of golden energy on his breath, not yet, but it couldn't be far off. He looked at the swirling cards, trying to catch his breath. Jack might be just one answer away now. What did he have to lose?

And he did want to say good-bye, damn it. For once, he had the chance. He deserved it. And if he was honest with himself ...

"I need to," the Doctor said hoarsely, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his brown coat. "I don't know why."

The fortune teller's tentacles dived into the storm of swirling cards, manipulated them almost too fast for even the Doctor's eyes to see. They snatched one card, glanced at it, and gave the mental equivalent of a smile. Then the cards swirled through the bubble around both of them, a dizzying hurricane lasting only a few seconds. Before they returned to their previous pattern, one split away from the pack. The fortune teller snatched it up, turned it over, gave it a poke, and it hovered in the air between the both of them.

Whatever senses the being possessed, whether conventional sight was among them or not, they bent forward a little along with the Doctor, contemplating the geometric design on the card they had turned. It was meaningless to the Doctor.

"Well?" the Doctor said impatiently. He ran his hands through his hair, then abruptly stuffed them back into his pockets when it turned out the roots of his hair were now capable of aching.

"I see," the fortune teller said.

"That's great. What do you see?"

"You have been looking, and not finding?"

"Yes!" Why did the fortune teller think the Doctor was here? "Obviously. Now where _is_ Jack hiding?"

The fortune teller slowly recited a series of numbers and letters - coordinates the TARDIS would be able to interpret. "That is where the trail starts," they said. "But beware - you can't find without looking."

Whatever the hell that meant. The Doctor decided he didn't care.

"Thank you," he said, sincerely and dubiously, and exited the bubble, feeling scrubbed raw, and not just from his body's impending breakdown.

  
  


* * *

  
  


His hands tingling with pins and needles that hadn't quite gone away again and wouldn't, the Doctor punched in the coordinates. Eager to get going, he activated the dematerialisation sequence. The time rotor began its work.

And then, before the TARDIS had so much as made it into the Vortex, the sequence aborted itself with a painful, screeching groan. A shudder went through the control room, and the Doctor lost his balance, crashing onto the floor. For a moment, everything seemed to be spinning around him. He planted his palms firmly on the floor grating, let it bite into his skin until the vertigo abated.

Damn. His body really was starting to fail. And he could feel the bruise that was about to form. If he lived that long.

Stubbornly, the Doctor picked himself up and went to check the set of coordinates on the monitor. They were exactly as the fortune teller had given them to him. Why was the TARDIS refusing? Now, of all times?

"Not now," the Doctor called up towards the time rotor, reproachfully. He patted the console. "Come on, old girl. This isn't the time to be stubborn."

On the monitor, the coordinates began to flash at him in obnoxious mauve.

"Come on," he repeated. "You don't really mind Jack any more, do you? He helped fix you, remember? You liked him, last time he was here. So let's go find him."

The coordinates merely kept flashing at him, and the Doctor scowled at the display, frustrated. Then he did a double-take as his brain finally caught up and parsed the coordinates, as he finally realised what he was seeing. Not just any time and place at all.

 _The end of time._ What the hell use was that?

Of course the TARDIS was refusing. Nothing could go there. _Nothing_ , because there was nothing to go _to_.

He'd already come closer to the end, once, than any Time Lord had ever come before, not counting the Master fleeing from the Time War - and even then, it had happened only because the TARDIS had been running from the impossibility that was Jack. It was the end of everything, where time and space themselves were dying. Not at all a place one could casually visit, even - or perhaps particularly - with a TARDIS.

Granted, Malcassairo had proven entirely survivable. But this? This was something else. This was beyond even that, forward into a time long after the death of the final suns, when time and space themselves were stretched to the breaking point, the very last moments just before it all ripped apart.

Nothing could exist there. Could it?

 _Damn_. Jack, of course, couldn't help existing, probably even then. So long as there was still time and space, no matter how thin and feeble, no matter how close to the end, there would still be Jack. The Doctor shuddered. 

"Damn," he groused out loud and ran his hands through his hair again on reflex, then flinched at the reminder of its new hypersensitivity. 

He started pacing around the console, thinking hard. Well, so much for that, then, right? The coordinates were useless. The TARDIS couldn't go there, because both _there_ and _then_ in the way she understood them wouldn't exist any more. She could never find her way.

Even Malcassairo she hadn't found on her own; he wouldn't have wanted to try and _aim_ there. Not and bet on where he'd end up, anyway. Not without having been there first. 

"Lot of help you were, fortune teller," he muttered. "I'm putting in a complaint, next time I visit."

Nothing to it, then, right? He'd just have to go and find Jack somewhere else, after all. Somewhere, somewhen he knew to find.

The Doctor's hand hesitated on the console. He couldn't, though. The only places he'd been able to find were crossing his own time stream. Too much of a risk, even for him. He couldn't, not with a fixed point in time and space. A paradox involving Jack might bring all of reality crashing down. Saying good-bye wasn't worth that, was it?

Was it?

He let out a deep breath. So. He couldn't see Jack. 

"Damn!" he snapped again at the TARDIS, at himself. "How hard can it be to find someone who's been bloody well _everywhere_?"

And that was when the idea occurred to him.

"No." The denial came immediately, reflexively. He couldn't do that.

 _Beware,_ the fortune teller had said. _You can't find without looking._ They had known - damn it, that infuriating person had _known_. 

The TARDIS couldn't find her way there, no, not to the very end of everything, where _everything_ and _nothing_ had become very nearly the same. But Jack was a Fact, then and there and everywhere, woven into the fabric of the universe, and no matter how hard the Doctor had tried to look away, that Fact was always there.

He could always find _that_.

Of course: the coordinates themselves were only a hint. _That's where the trail starts_ , the fortune teller had said. Not where it ended. That, he'd have to find on his own.

That, he'd have to look for, really _look_ for, on his own.

"All right," he whispered. "All right, then." He put his hand back on the lever, activated the sequence.

Nothing happened. The TARDIS flashed mauve lights at him again. Had he really come this close, had he really decided to do _this_ , the thing he'd been avoiding since before his last regeneration, only to have the TARDIS stop him?

"Come on," the Doctor cajoled. "I can do it. I'll get us there, promise. There and back again in time for tea."

The lights stopped flashing. He could feel the TARDIS pausing, like holding in a breath. 

"Please," he asked. Begged. "Come on, old girl. For me. _Please_."

For a long moment, nothing. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, the time rotor came alive. Almost in slow motion, the TARDIS dematerialised.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The Doctor was piloting. Not just flying the TARDIS, but functioning as a pilot in the maritime sense, manoeuvring her through the strangest, most dangerous currents she'd ever had to cross. She'd taken him as far as she could go, navigating by the fortune teller's coordinates, but when she'd lost her way the Doctor had needed to take over. He'd had to start adjusting their course manually, bit by bit, as fast as he could.

He barely managed to keep up.

At first that struggle was enough to distract him from what, exactly, he was guiding them by. He had to keep _looking_ , yes, but he didn't have attention to spare, didn't have to _see_ , much less examine his own reaction. It was terrifying nonetheless, just consciously looking at that Fact he'd had one glimpse of, once, long ago. One glimpse, and he'd run away as far and as fast as he could. He still wanted to run, damn it, almost as much as he wanted to find Jack. 

Almost.

He'd avoided looking for so long. Now he was, and his head hurt. Of course it hurt. An impossibility burned through him, stillness where nothing could be still, an inescapable, stark Truth. In the face of the absolute, his mind felt like coming apart at the seams.

_It's Jack, it's only Jack._

He couldn't let himself lose focus for a single moment, or they'd be lost. If they materialised in the wrong place _then_ , they'd never find their way into the vortex again.

If they even survived the materialisation sequence in the first place.

 _Jack_ , the Doctor thought, focusing all his attention on that beacon, the Fact more real than any reality, the one fixed point that defined the universe and was in turn defined by it. Inescapable indeed.

The TARDIS turned, shuddering, as he adjusted their course again.

Time was all movement, all the time, an all-encompassing flow. It never ceased; it never stilled. Except with Jack. In that eternal flow, Jack was a piece of the ocean that remained unchanging, not a molecule ever out of place. He was a stillness driven through time at right angles - a stillness that pierced through everything. It was _wrong_.

 _Oh Rose, what have you done?_

The Doctor nearly turned around several times, nearly ran. He almost couldn't bear it. But wrong or not, it was Jack, and if he wanted to find him ...

_Can't find him if you can't look._

He fought down a wave of dizziness, clenched his hands around the edge of the console for a moment to steady himself. He'd come this far; he wasn't going to stop now. He'd find Jack, damn the man - he'd pin him down. Even if it had to be _there_.

The Doctor forced himself to focus again and let the terrible awareness scream through him. In the vibrations of the TARDIS all around him, the Doctor could feel the same awareness, the same fear, the same flight instinct at work. 

No. This time they wouldn't run away. This time, they were running towards.

The Doctor sprinted around the console, pulling another lever, pumping, pressing buttons, barely managing the necessary adjustments in time. His mind was still trying to flinch away, but he could do this. He could. He wasn't diving into the heart of an abomination; facing the unfaceable - he was rushing towards a friend. 

Wasn't he?

The TARDIS turned again; the internal gravitic stabilisers gave out, and she was rolling. The Doctor tumbled across the console room, caught hold of a strut, was thrown this way, then that, until with an abrupt _thump_ the movement stopped and the muscles in his arms gave out. 

He kept falling, right towards the doors, which flew open on impact. He tumbled outside, grasping in panic for the door frame because he knew when he was, here at the very edge and end of things, where time and space were stretched to near nothing and only mind could still exist. At the very end of it all, where space had almost lost its meaning and time itself was about to give out.

Jack somehow, impossibly, typically, was here - the Doctor had tracked him here, so he had to be. But Jack was impossible, after all.

And then the Doctor sat up and blinked, cautiously releasing his death grip on blue-painted wood. He stared down at the surface under his legs in bemusement, pulled at leaves of grass. The scent of summer hung in the air. The ground was solid underneath him, and he was breathing - not the air from the TARDIS's extended life support field, but something that tasted fresh and real and planetary.

In a place where no planets were, or could be.

_What?_

  
  


* * *

  
  


The Doctor looked up. Around him was a meadow, grass too tall to see over it while he was sitting - hip-high, he estimated. The TARDIS's landing had flattened a small circle around them. The sky above was a blue that shouldn't, couldn't be possible here.

Vision was drastically at odds with his other senses. The ground beneath him felt real and solid, yet simultaneously like something that would break apart at any moment to reveal itself as a cardboard imitation. Everything around him seemed to echo weirdly through time, and something inescapable loomed.

The Doctor grimaced, leaned back against the TARDIS's reassuring reality, and resolutely turned his mind towards the grass underneath him. 

"You shouldn't exist," he told the mysterious vegetation. "This whole place is wrong. So let's find out what you're all about." He plucked his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and started a scan.

"You shouldn't exist here, either," said a familiar voice.

The Doctor startled to his feet in an instant. He shot up; one of his legs spasmed; and he was back on his arse. His head seemed to be taking a rollercoaster ride, judging by the wave of vertigo rolling over him. He glared up through the momentary blur, one hand pressed into the ground for balance.

"How did you sneak up on me in this place?" His mouth, on autopilot. 

"It's not exactly a place," said Jack.

What? That wasn't even an answer.

The Doctor struggled to focus on the visual. He'd looked too closely, for too long, and all he saw was a stillness so absolute, it was impossible to comprehend. It _hurt_.

But through the impossibility swamping the Doctor's senses, he could still see Jack Harkness, looking as he always did. Sometimes a little older, sometimes a little younger, but essentially unchanged, unchanging. A familiar face; a familiar Fact. 

The Doctor's mouth worked, then fell shut. He sat there, looking up at a man in black trousers and a white shirt not that dissimilar from ones he might have worn when he was still mortal, standing at the edge of the circle of flattened grass.

Mortal. Ha. 

"Look at you," Jack said, and Stillness cut through Time, walking straight towards the Doctor.

The Doctor swallowed. He was here; he'd found what he'd been looking for. Urgency had driven him here, a desperate need to see Jack one last time, to say good-bye, to ...

To do what? Jack didn't look like he needed anything from him, not any more.

Jack crossed the last few steps between them and smoothly sank onto the grass next to the Doctor, looking at him intently. The Doctor's skin broke out in gooseflesh, and he grasped for a diversion, anything but _this_ -

"Hello, Doctor."

Oh, no. No, no, no.

"Stop it," the Doctor snapped, repressively, on reflex. He looked away, down, at his sonic screwdriver. At his hand: the pins and needles had been joined by a tremor. He tightened his grip in a vain attempt to hide it.

His screwdriver was still scanning. Except - 

"What? This doesn't make any sense!" The scan was as useless as his own senses - there was more interference than signal, and the results were all contradictory. "No planet; this can't be a planet. It's got to be some kind of space-time bubble, but there isn't enough space and time left, not now. This is all wrong! What are you even doing here?" He glared at Jack, accusing.

"That should be my question," Jack said mildly, his eyes not moving away from the Doctor. "You're pretty far out of your timeline, you know." He grinned, an incongruous and infuriating thing for a cosmic Fact to do. "Me, I just live here." 

"Of course you do." The Doctor narrowed his eyes. "It's your fault, isn't it? This whole thing."

"Everything's always my fault." Jack mocked up a pout and leaned forward, ignoring the Doctor's suppressed flinch. He brushed a finger under the Doctor's chin and examined his face with eyes that looked, simultaneously, as young and fresh and blue as they ever had, and impossibly dark and ancient, with a vertigo-inducing depth of time unfathomable even for a Time Lord. "You're not looking so great, Doctor." 

Beneath the casual remark was an undercurrent of something that seemed to scrape against the Doctor's senses, that made his skin itch and his hearts ache. The Doctor aimed for a glare in return, and failed. He looked away, into the meadow around them.

"How are you stabilising this?" he demanded, gesturing around them. "You know this shouldn't exist!"

From the corner of his eye he could see Jack's expressive face fall still for a fraction of a second, before a grin was thrown over it like a comfortable coat. 

"Rub it in, Doctor, why don't you," Jack said lightly. And then, "I was never that good at doing what I should."

"Stop it," the Doctor snapped again.

Jack's eyes grew hard. " _You_ never stop."

Point to Jack, for that. Here they were, at the end of the universe itself, and it was still same old, same old. The Doctor swallowed. His throat felt raw and dry. 

Except he _was_ stopping, wasn't he? He was being stopped. Four knocks, a death, the whole kit and caboodle. It couldn't be much longer now - half a day, perhaps, if he was lucky. Enough to do what he had to.

The Doctor huffed, drew up his shoulders, stretched his sore muscles. "Well," he said slowly, unwillingly, through a grimace, "that's where you're wrong. I'm dying, you see." 

Jack threw him a narrow-eyed look at the choice of words, but seemed unsurprised. "Well," he repeated mildly, imitating the Doctor's drawn-out pronunciation, "you and me both, then."

The Doctor flinched. End of the universe, right. Even for Jack, written into the laws of the universe as his existence was, that meant -

He turned away from the thought. "This shouldn't _be able_ to exist," he complained, taking refuge in science, or perhaps philosophy.

Jack went along, allowing the diversion. "Have you forgotten your Descartes? I think, therefore I am," he quoted with a cheeky wink - a wink that was pure Jack, at any time and in any place, no matter how much horror he'd seen. No impossible state of being, no inconceivable amount of living had changed it. Apparently, not even a dying universe could. "Or in this case," Jack amended, "I _am_ , therefore I am. I don't really have a choice."

The Doctor blinked. Of course! Jack being what he was - how else could it be? This wasn't a planet; this wasn't a space-time bubble - not a place at all, just as Jack had said: this was _life_ , self-sustaining, because Jack couldn't _not_ be alive. The same phenomenon that had allowed Jack to step into a chamber flooded with radiation that dissolved every other living thing, and remain unaffected. The very fact of the Fact's existence was creating this, around the still point at the centre of the universe. It shouldn't have existed - it was all wrong - but it did. It must.

"Right," the Doctor said, uncomfortably. "That."

Jack rolled his eyes in gentle mockery. "You're really slowing down, aren't you? You should have realised. What did they teach you at Time Lord school?"

_That you're wrong._

"How would I know?" the Doctor grumped. "It's not like I ever paid attention."

Jack actually laughed at that. "Now that I know is a lie."

"How could you know that?"

"For one, the Master likes to talk out of school. Met a few versions in my time." Jack looked into the distance for a moment, his expression almost wistful. Nostalgic, at the memory of a Time Lord who had tortured him for a year. That was a relief; time and distance had healed those wounds more thoroughly than the Doctor could have hoped for.

Relief, too, that the Doctor's grief for the Master might not always remain a betrayal of all his friends. 

_The Master, pulled back into the time lock, trapped forever in the last moments of the Time War -_

_Everything dies. And when it doesn't, it's worse._

And fine, yes, Jack was right about school - the Doctor had paid plenty of attention, when it had suited him. He'd been a bookworm in his time, had never grown tired of learning new things. But while he'd fixated on some subjects, he'd blanked out on others. 

Well; no one could do everything at a time, not even a Time Lord. And he didn't like that knowing look on Jack's face.

Wiping it off was easy.

"So," he said, "here you are, time and space running out on you. It's all stretched so thin, it's going to snap any time now. Thought about what's going to happen to you, then?"

Jack stilled. "Yes," he said, voice entirely neutral.

"So. You're dying after all."

"Probably," Jack said.

"Got yourself trapped, too far out to loop back again?" Digging deeper into the wound. "Is that why I'm here? Were you hoping to hitch a ride?"

There had to be a purpose, something to do here, something to accomplish. Otherwise, what was the point?

_Might have thought about that before you came, Doctor._

"Wasn't going to ask," Jack said, too calmly, interrupting his thoughts. "No. I've been through everything, more times than I can count. Not this time, Doctor. Time to face the music, after all."

The Doctor flinched. "Giving up, then."

"Death's not so terrible. People face it every day."

"How would you know? Death's for other people, not you." The Doctor's lips twisted into a cruel line. "But not now."

"No," Jack said, coldly. "Not now." A corner of his mouth pulled down. "We can't all keep running away all our lives."

"Watch me." Lashing right back. _Shaken your calm after all, have I?_ It was petty satisfaction.

Jack's face twitched, and he shifted his seat, no longer sitting companionably next to the Doctor, facing him instead. "Which reminds me," he continued, unpleasantly, "how'd you even come here? The TARDIS can't navigate this far, and she sure as hell wouldn't want to. How'd you make her?"

He'd begged the TARDIS; that was how. 

"Suppose there's things worse than you," he snapped back.

"Are there?" Jack leaned forward, eyes glittering dangerously. And then his hands were on the Doctor's face, touching him for the second time that day.

Second, yet first. Singular, unlike any touch the Doctor had experienced. 

Time Lords were touch telepaths, but it usually took an effort to touch someone's mind. This was the opposite, an assault against the borders of his self. Jack was suddenly _there_ , stark and present, absolute. A Fact.

It hit him like a sledge hammer, that small touch. 

The Doctor yanked himself away, leaned back against the TARDIS and gulped deep breaths, overwhelmed, trembling. His head ringing.

"You did that on purpose," he accused, through a cough.

"Keep running, Doctor," Jack said harshly. "It's not as if you know how to do anything else."

The Doctor glared. "Still feeling slighted?" he mocked. Reaching for his worst impulses, his guilt, bringing them to the fore. "After all those years. Poor little fixed point you are." And he reached out, hooking a hand around the back of Jack's neck, pulling him closer. 

It seared through him, but he pushed through to ignore it, to act instead, to shift to his knees and straddle Jack where he sat, to force their bodies together. "This what you wanted?" 

Jack's hands closed around his shoulders, and for a moment he thought - hoped, feared - Jack would push him away. Instead his fingers dug in harshly, and Jack's mouth was against his ear, whispering, "Careful what you ask for, Doctor."

"Wasn't asking." He thrust his hips against Jack, once, twice, a deliberate provocation.

And suddenly he was on his back, Jack's weight on top of him - a human body, firm and warm and real, and with it a _presence_ weighing on him, a Fact he must acknowledge, every fibre of his being trying to refuse and failing.

His trembling hands were clenching into Jack's shirt, and he pushed up, his face against Jack's, chin against raspy chin. "Yes," he hissed. "Come on -"

Jack's lips were on his neck, teeth scraping against his skin, suction hard enough to burst small blood vessels, to form hickeys on the Doctor's skin. He bit down on Jack's shoulder in retaliation, through his shirt, and Jack's hips surged against him.

It was wrong, terribly wrong, and terribly _right_ , all of it. 

Moving, and still. Jack's body moving against his; his overwhelming presence an immutable pressure, implacable and unchanging. The Doctor gasped for breath, for relief, for _more_ , the aches of his failing body entirely drowned out by _this_.

It didn't feel like dying, this. It felt like living.

"Jack -"

Jack's hips against his, their cocks hard against each other through the fabric of their trousers. It shouldn't have been possible, to maintain arousal with a Fact assaulting his senses. But _possible_ had never applied to Jack.

Was this how it could be, if he actually looked? He might lose himself in this, never come out again.

All his senses overwhelmed, the Doctor's orgasm was drawn from him suddenly and almost painfully, scraping him raw from the inside out.

A moment later Jack thrust down hard against him one last time, then went slack. The Doctor clenched his eyes shut, struggling to catch his breath. His hands itched to bury themselves in Jack's hair, or to push him away. He dug his fingernails into his palms instead, and Jack rolled away from him before he could decide. The terrible presence abated, and he sat up, grasping for some way to regain control of the situation, of himself.

The stickiness in his pants wasn't helping.

"Enjoyed that, did you?" fell from his mouth. "Putting me in my place."

On Jack's face, a smile twisted itself into something dark. Then worse: something bland and still. "You started it. But you've never been good with finishing what you started, have you?"

"Not good with finishing at all." Belligerent admission. The Doctor looked away, bracing himself for the next barb. The next unquestionable hit, right on target.

Jack said nothing for a long moment. Then fingertips brushed against the Doctor's face, and the Doctor flinched back -

\- only to realise a moment later that this time, the touch of skin against skin had come with no telepathic surge, no increase in his awareness of Jack's unnatural nature at all. The Doctor glared. "You _did_ do that on purpose."

The stillness in Jack's face broke, not into anger, not into hurt, but into something almost gentle. He reached out again, and this time the Doctor managed not to flinch. Jack's thumb brushed his cheek, an entirely human touch. The Doctor swallowed convulsively. 

"Not that ready to give up on life after all, are you?" he snapped.

Jack's blue eyes held steady, not reacting to yet another barb. Self-defence; it was self-defence -

Oh, who was he kidding? They were both dying. And for Jack, ending with the end of the universe, it was a far more certain ending than his own, prophecy or not. Damn if his mind wasn't trying to flinch away from that, too. The Doctor might regenerate, after all, little though he wanted to become someone new, but Jack wouldn't. When time and space finally snapped -

Wait. 

"You're the centre," he said slowly, thinking it out. The centre of a dying universe. What had the fortune teller called him? "The Eye of the Storm." 

"Yep," Jack said, popping the _p_ with slow confusion. "They did call me that, for a while."

"The universe is dying _here_ ," the Doctor said, warming up to his subject matter, "all around you, around a still centre. Time and space are about to rip, and -" His eyes lit up, gleaming with sudden enlightenment, with pleasure. "It's not just going to snap, is it? This wouldn't happen without you, but with you, there's a fixed point. A centre, like I said. It's going to snap _back_ , isn't it?"

When time and space became stretched so thin they finally ripped, it would all snap back into its centre - and then, very likely, back out the other way, as it were. Turning itself inside out. _Impossible. Fantastic. Brilliant._

Jack tilted his head to the side, regarded him with mild amusement, like a parent towards a particularly clever child. He didn't look the slightest bit surprised. 

The Doctor bristled. "What, you couldn't just say?"

"I don't _know_ ," Jack said with quiet, deliberate emphasis. "It's a theory; not like I've done it before." He shrugged. "And even if - I don't know if I'll remember. If I'll be _me_."

The Doctor's mind whirled, and it wasn't just vertigo from his failing senses. Here they were, at the death of the universe, in its very last days. And - damn it, of _course_ , with Jack Harkness here, things might still somehow go on. Even if _somehow_ meant the rebirth of the universe, an entire new cosmos.

A Fact. Too absolute to die - quite possibly, even now.

And for once, the emotion that welled up at the thought wasn't tinged with revulsion, with fear. It was gladness, pure and unmitigated.

But, _I don't know_ , echoed in the Doctor's memory. "You too," he breathed.

Like the Doctor who'd gone back to see the Ood, knowing his song was ending, Jack was facing the death of the universe. Like the Doctor, he was dying, unsure if there would be a rebirth.

The same thing, on a _much_ larger scale. 

And yet, unlike the Doctor, Jack was facing that unknown calmly, unflinching.

Had Jack, too, run from his ending? He'd admitted as much: _I've been through everything, more times than I can count._ How often had he looped back through time, avoiding the death of the universe, and his own? But here he was, after all, facing that very end with what grace he could.

Wasn't that what Jack had been trying to tell him, the entire time? 

Well, except when the Doctor had finally poked at him hard enough to make him lash out in return. Still Jack, after all. The Doctor looked at him, eyes and hearts burning, aching for him.

Jack, unaware of the turn of the Doctor's thoughts, smiled in return, warm and wistful. "I'm glad you're here," he said quietly, a confession. "One last time." 

_Oh._

_I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so, so sorry._

Suddenly Jack's eyes were fully focused on the Doctor, too blue and too intent. He cupped a hand around the Doctor's cheek. And he brushed his lips against the Doctor's, briefly, carefully, then pulled back, a heartbreaking smile on his face. "Good-bye, Doctor."

 _One last time. Good-bye._ Wasn't that what _he_ had come here for? The Doctor sputtered a laugh. 

"That's my line," he complained. Annoyed and terrified and flattered, all at once.

A last time for Jack, even if he did survive, in the new universe that came after. A last time for both of them, if it was the end of the Doctor, after all.

_Oh._

"Rose was the first," he whispered. Jack looked at him strangely, but he ignored it. The thought forming itself behind his eyes was stunning in its clarity. "She was the first face I saw, with these eyes. I want her to be the last." He looked up, leaned forward. "You were my first mistake, Jack. My first wrong."

Jack winced. "Doctor?" Hesitantly.

The urgency that had driven him here - _this_ was where it had come from. This was why.

A humourless snort forced itself from his nose. "My first decision, in this body, was to keep running. That's why I had to come here. Why I needed to see you. I want my last to be a better one." He grimaced. "Not that I _want_ it to be my last, mind -"

"Doctor," Jack repeated, and the look in his eyes could have stopped hearts. "You need to go back. You know that."

"Do I?" the Doctor snapped, letting the moment fall away. He sounded petulant; he knew it. He didn't care. "I don't want to go."

"You can't run from your death forever."

 _The hell I can't._ The words were on his tongue, on his lips, but the look in Jack's eyes stopped them dead. Those eyes knew too much, had seen too much. Had stopped running.

"Maybe I can't," he said instead, and looked down at his trousers, at the grassy ground under him. Then he looked up again, met Jack's eyes squarely. Jack's face gave nothing away, but what did that mean, in a man who'd lived until here, who was the furthest thing from mortal even a Time Lord could imagine? 

So: he was dying, and he'd come here for his reward. Jack, along with his universe, was dying, and perhaps the Doctor was _his_ reward. 

Perhaps it was both of them, here for each other. 

"You know, don't you," the Doctor forced out eventually. "What's going to happen to me."

"Spoilers," Jack said, gently. Inevitably. 

"Oh, stop it," the Doctor muttered, on reflex. His hearts seemed to jolt at the thought. He swallowed, made himself mime a pout, wheedled. "Oh, come on. Not even a hint? Spoilers are good sometimes, you know. Makes you appreciate things more, not worrying about what-happens-next."

Jack's eyes were kind. "Doctor." Chiding.

The Doctor looked away. "Please," he ground out.

Jack's eyes were on him for a long, silent moment, piercing. Then he broke into a bright, cheeky grin. "I never could refuse you," he said, wryly, and leaned forward, confidentially. "All right. One spoiler, just because it's you." Then, very quietly, barely a breath between them, "I really did like the next you."

The Doctor gasped, clenched his eyes shut. "Thank you," he whispered. The pins and needles had reached his lips, now.

When he opened his eyes again, Jack was sitting there calmly, smiling at him. Then he held out his hands.

The Doctor almost stuffed his hands into his pockets. Instead, slowly, incrementally, he reached out.

Jack's hands felt like hands: human, warm, firm. Real, in the banal sense of the word. Jack gave him a slight squeeze, then a small tug, not pulling him in, but prompting him to come. His throat tight, the Doctor went.

"Jack," he said hoarsely, leaning against Jack's warmth, closing his eyes. Letting himself feel. After a moment the Doctor pulled his hands out of Jack's grasp and wrapped them around Jack's shoulders. "Jack," he said again, but warmly this time, intently. And he tilted his head forward until they were as close as they could come without their faces touching. "I'm so, so very sorry. About everything."

"No," Jack said, hands curling around the Doctor's neck, "you're not. And neither am I." He brushed a kiss against the Doctor's forehead, almost a benediction. 

It wasn't forgiveness. It was more.

"Thank you," the Doctor breathed again. And then he pulled Jack closer again, kissed him - deeply, desperately, helplessly. 

Their bodies moved against each other, and it made him more aware of the drying stickiness in his trousers, an external itch to add to everything that was breaking down under his skin. It didn't matter, not now, not with Jack's body against his, Jack's mouth warm and welcoming, Jack's arms steadying him. Jack couldn't be much more comfortable, but he clung on just as tightly.

Too soon, it ended. Everything was ending. He was dying; the universe was dying; even Jack was dying. 

_Your song is ending._

They both had to go.

_Good-bye. For the last time. I'm so sorry._

And then the thought came to him.

"You don't know, do you?" the Doctor asked, a wave of giddiness sweeping over him. "What's going to happen over there." Once the last stretched-out remnants of time and space snapped back and inverted, and the next universe was born.

"Of course not," Jack said, looking at him in confusion. "What are you getting at?"

The Doctor broke out into a smile, a weight lifting from him. "I've travelled to other universes before," he said simply, lightly. "Maybe you'll see me again after all, over there."

It shouldn't have been such a relief, that thought. That potential: a future, not just for each of them, but for the two of them together. Something to always look forward to. Something to make this step into the unknown, into the future, that much less daunting.

Jack's eyes widened. And then he was smiling, brightly, with that light that had charmed the Doctor from the start, even when he'd done his best to resist it. 

"Oh, Doctor," Jack said, smile turning to a smirk, fond and mocking, "you really don't like endings, do you?"

"No," the Doctor admitted, grinning. "I really, really don't."

  
  


* * *

  
  


He stepped back into the TARDIS reluctantly, knowing he could never return, unsure when he'd see Jack - any version of Jack - again.

But he still had people to see, to say good-bye to. He reminded himself of that as he changed his underwear, reminded himself of what he still had to do, before it ended. It would be over soon enough. Everything was aching, now. And that bruise had formed on his hip, after all.

The Doctor hesitated another moment; then he dematerialised the TARDIS, following back the path they'd come. It was a turbulent flight, a difficult one, but this time, the TARDIS found her way more easily, like following Ariadne's thread back to familiar space and time, the universe as it had been, the world they'd come from.

Home, or as close as it came.

The Doctor found himself coughing on the floor grating as they materialised. He needed a moment to catch his breath, to shake off another tremor. He could feel the decay progressing further, under his skin.

More clumsily than he'd have liked, he climbed to his feet.

They'd landed _somewhere_ , but he had no idea where, or when. Rubbing his temples against the headache forming behind them, he went and poked his head outside the door. He blinked; then he blinked again. People of multiple species were milling around, drinks in their hands, chatting. From an open door, music was drifting towards them. 

Life.

The TARDIS was standing just outside of some pub or tavern or club.

Well. Why not? Now he just had to get oriented. The architecture looked post-Harfydian, which meant Sto, but when? The Doctor focused on his time sense, and nearly flinched when something - someone - suddenly loomed large, here-and-now as well as everywhere, everywhen in his perception. The Doctor did a double take. What the hell? 

His eyes followed the sensation to the open door. Drawn, suspicious, incredulous, he went inside, stood by the entrance for a moment, then stepped behind a column to keep out of sight. Because there he was, straight across from him: Captain Jack Harkness, large as life, greatcoat and all, sitting at the bar and staring into a glass.

The Doctor had scoured time and space looking for him, had gone to the very end of things for him. And now, as if he'd never been hidden, never been impossible to track down, here he was again: Jack Harkness, in the flesh. 

And in a bad mood, it looked. Brooding. Jack wasn't talking to anyone, wasn't flirting, not even with that cute bloke over there - wait, was that Midshipman Frame?

Small universe. So small. They were all bound together: their stories, their lives. Perhaps small enough that they _would_ find each other again, no matter what. He hoped.

_Here you are, Jack. Here we are._

What to say now, what to do? Easy. Easy, now that he'd looked, now that he'd seen. Now that he'd done what he'd needed to do. The Doctor pulled a slip of paper out of one of his pockets, dug for a pen, then scribbled down a quick message.

 _His name is Alonso,_ he wrote.

Meaning: Jack Harkness, don't stop. Don't you ever, ever stop.


End file.
